Sherri didn’t want anything to do with guys like that. Instead, she wanted a confident real man, the kind of man Hefner imagined as the ideal reader of the magazine—someone like Prince Charles, only better looking. He and Lady Diana had recently announced their engagement, and it was all anyone talked about. Everyone was jealous of Diana, even the Bunnies. Her life, like Cinderella’s, had changed entirely because she’d been noticed by the right sort of man, the kind who opened doors for her, called her “darling,” and told her she was lovely. Sherri wanted that to happen to her. She imagined someone debonair, sophisticated, and well read. He’d have an aristocratic countenance and melt her with his eyes, make her tingle with electricity. He could fill up her emptiness, make her complete. Sherri thought the resort was designed for exactly that sort of man, the perfect, rich guest who would emerge as if from the pages of a Harlequin romance: suave and remote, worldly, smart, strong and chiseled, yet tortured by some sort of secret or feeling of being misunderstood. But where was he, this mythical, masculine man who was just sensitive enough? The only men she saw had comb-overs and beer bellies and stress acne on the backs of their necks. She wanted to meet someone who could show her some excitement, someone who would notice she was especially suited for him, like the butterflies she’d read about whose wing design matched the flowers they drew nectar from.

The management was serious about transgressions with patrons, although, from what Sherri could tell, it happened all the time. Dating a keyholder was a real badge of honor, as long as you weren’t caught. Retired Bunnies often returned to visit the resort, and when they did, they hung off the arms of men they’d once waited on, their diamond wedding rings sparkling under the recessed lights. Sherri didn’t want to get married, not yet. What she wanted was a boyfriend who could open her up to a world of new experiences and opportunities. The resort was the lever.

That was her state of mind when Sherri met Sam, who stayed at the resort during a Cattle Raisers convention in nearby Waukesha. He’d cut his thin, wind-hardened lip on the rim of a broken glass, and the manager tripped over himself to make it up to him, telling Sherri to bring him bandages and club soda for the bloodstain, and a towel to wipe it up. After all of her mother’s falls, Sherri was a pro at cleaning injuries. For years, her mother had denied that her dizziness was a serious problem and she’d fallen all the time, cracking her head and breaking her ankle and wrist until her doctor had insisted first on a walker, then a wheelchair. A cut lip? As far as Sherri was concerned, that was nothing.